The 2017 hit Call Me by Your Name was almost a radically different film according to screenwriter James Ivory, who insists Shia LaBeouf could have starred opposite Timothée Chalamet instead of Armie Hammer.
The film with the most explicit peach scene in the history of cinema saw Armie Hammer and Chalamet play lovers on the Italian Riviera and was everywhere in pop culture for a year or two.
Would it have proven as popular with the intense LaBeouf as Chalamet’s older lover? The film’s screenwriter James Ivory seems to think so.
As per GQ, the screenwriter discussed the thorny issues that arose while making the film, with Ivory often butting heads with director Luca Guadagnino. According to Ivory, he was supposed to codirect alongside Guadagnino until he was unexpectedly “dropped” from production.
“The last time I saw Luca was before it began, in New York, when I still believed I was codirecting with him,” Ivory said. “We joked about what might happen if we got into an argument on set, and laughed about it.”
He continued: “I didn’t care all that much. I could see that it might be very awkward sometimes to have two directors on the set. How would it look to the actors and crew if we had a dispute? Who then would be the real director when one of us had to give way? How many minutes of expensive shooting time would be lost as we argued?”
Major casting issues abounded too, with Ivory claiming poor LaBeouf met a similar fate to him. While he ivory had initial doubts about the actor’s ability to play such an intellectual character, he thought he could eventually pull it off.
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“He’s an extremely good actor,” he said. “But as an academic writing about the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, he would be a stretch. Well, I thought, he would be a sort of diamond-in-the-rough-scholar type, like my friend Bruce Anawalt.”
When LaBeouf and Chalamet then read together, Ivory definitely knew he could do it. “Shia came to read for us in New York with Timothée Chalamet, paying for his own plane ticket, and Luca and I had been blown away. The reading by the two young actors had been sensational; they made a very convincing hot couple.
But then, too, Shia was dropped. He had had some bad publicity. He’d fought with his girlfriend; he’d fended off the police somewhere when they had tried to calm him down. And Luca would not call him, or his agent. I emailed Shia to offer reassurance, but then Luca cast Armie Hammer and never spoke to, or of, Shia again.”
You’ve got to appreciate the dark irony of LaBeouf being dropped for “bad publicity” given what befell Hammer after the success of Call Me by Your Name. After allegations of abuse and cannibalism, the actor was dropped from several high profile projects, although his legal team have denied the allegations.
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Check out the trailer for Call Me by Your Name:
